A Talking Head Speaks

David Byrne talks about the relationship between money and music.

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DAVID BYRNE WEARS MANY HATS. Not only is his eighth solo record, Grown Backwards, in stores this month, but his Luaka Bop record label still churns out plenty of eclectic albums. Here, the music veteran considers the relationship between money and music.

ESQ: Do you think money can be an incentive to better art?

DB: For a lot of artists, the incentive is just to sell records. And that doesn't mean better art; it just means more popular art. Maybe it's just been better marketed. Or maybe the person marketing it is more ruthless than the other person. Maybe they killed the other person. VHS is not better than BETA--it just won out.

ESQ: Is the music industry reformable?

DB: I think you could do it, but you'd really have to turn the model completely around. I think all recorded media--from films and books to music--are going to be loss leaders to take us to something else. Recorded music will be seen as a trailer that gets you to the live show. What we're doing is heading back to the 1800s, before the era of recorded music. At that point, the troubadour, the performance, and the song itself were what was valuable. And there's nothing inherently wrong or evil about that.

ESQ: Does it bother you that Apple has valued every song at 99 cents, regardless of whether it's good or not?

DB: It frustrates me, yeah. It's frustrating that I can spend a lot of time working on a song I consider a breakthrough or a song we spend five or six times playing until we get it right, and then somebody else comes along with a drum machine and a guy singing something pretty dumb over it, and it's given the same price. But I also accept that sometimes the guy with the stupid ingredients may have tapped into something brilliant. You just have to grit your teeth and say, "Damn. I wish I'd thought of that."